Egypt’s Women Health Initiative provides services to 21M women

CAIRO – 3 February 2021: Executive Director of the National Committee for Women’s Health Ahmed Morsi confirmed that there are more than 5,000 services provided for women other than mobile clinics.

Morsi stated that over the past period, the state was able to provide services to around 21 million women.

He further noted that the coming period will witness increase in the number of services that women need, along with COVID-19 measures.

In the same context, Morsi explained that 11 million women were examined for free as part of the initiative since it launched last July.

In his TV comments, Morsi continued saying that medical checks and examinations are free of charge for everyone as part of the initiative.

According to the Ministry of Health, the initiative is sustainable and targets women nationwide, starting from the age of 18 years, and seeks the detection of non-communicable diseases (diabetes, blood pressure, weight and height measurement and determination of body mass index, level of obesity or overweight and raising awareness of disease risk factors, and reproductive health, family planning and healthy living, and awareness of the method of breast self-examination.

As part of the state’s keenness on maintaining healthy households and society at large, the President’s Egyptian Women's Health Initiative was launched to promote the health of Egyptian women. Women were targeted in particular as a bracket in dire need of health education and care, according to the initiative’s official website. The World Health Organization statistics have alarmingly revealed the high incidence of breast cancer among Egyptian women, which constitutes 35% of all women cancer cases.

The initiative is designed to screen carcinoma of the breast at an early stage for 28 million women governorate-wide; pursue clinical examination; and provide free-of-charge treatment. In the same vein, reproductive health, family planning, and healthy lifestyles remain at the core of the initiative. Detection of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure and obesity constitute an integral part of this endeavor. Risk factors of non-communicable diseases and breast self-exam are further considered.